“No, no,” she answered hastily—almost indignantly, “of course I don’t mean that.”
“Then it is only that you don’t love me yet. Of course you don’t. Why should you? But you will, dear, some day. And I will wait patiently until that day comes and not trouble you with entreaties. I will wait for you as Jacob waited for Rachel; and as the long years seemed to him but as a few days because of the love he bore her, so it shall be with me, if only you will not send me away quite without hope.”
She was looking down, white-faced, with a hardening of the lips as if she were in bodily pain. “You don’t understand,” she whispered. “It can’t be—it can never be. There is something that makes it impossible, now and always. I can’t tell you more than that.”
“But, Ruth dearest,” I pleaded despairingly, “may it not become possible some day? Can it not be made possible? I can wait, but I can’t give you up. Is there no chance whatever that this obstacle may be removed?”
“Very little, I fear. Hardly any. No, Paul; it is hopeless, and I can’t bear to talk about it. Let me go now. Let us say goodbye here and see one another no more for a while. Perhaps we may be friends again some day—when you have forgiven me.”
“Forgiven you, dearest!” I exclaimed. “There is nothing to forgive. And we are friends, Ruth. Whatever happens, you are the dearest friend I have on earth, or can ever have.”
“Thank you, Paul,” she said faintly. “You are very good to me. But let me go, please. I must be alone.”
She held out a trembling hand, and, as I took it, I was shocked to see how terribly agitated and ill she looked.
“May I not come with you, dear?” I pleaded.
“No, no!” she exclaimed breathlessly; “I must go away by myself. I want to be alone. Goodbye.”
“Before I let you go, Ruth—if you must go—I must have a most solemn promise from you.”
Her sad gray eyes met mine and her lips quivered with an unspoken question.
“You must promise me,” I went on, “that if ever this barrier that parts us should be removed, you will let me know instantly. Remember that I love you always, and that I am waiting for you always on this side of the grave.”
She caught her breath in a quick little sob, and pressed my hand.
“Yes,” she whispered: “I promise. Goodbye.”
She pressed my hand again and was gone; and, as I gazed at the empty doorway through which she had passed, I caught a glimpse of her reflection in a glass on the landing, where she had paused for a moment to wipe her eyes. I felt it, in a manner, indelicate to have seen her, and turned away my head quickly; and yet I was conscious of a certain selfish satisfaction in the sweet sympathy that her grief bespoke.
But now that she was gone a horrible sense of desolation descended on me. Only now, by the consciousness of irreparable loss, did I begin to realize the meaning of this passion of love that had stolen unawares into my life. How it had glorified the present and spread a glamor of delight over the dimly considered future: how all pleasures and desires, hopes and ambitions, had converged upon it as a focus; how it had stood out as the one great reality behind which the other circumstances of life were as a background, shimmering, half seen, immaterial and unreal. And now it was gone—lost, as it seemed, beyond hope; and that which was left to me was but the empty frame from which the picture had vanished.
I have no idea how long I stood rooted to the spot where she had left me, wrapped in a dull consciousness of pain, immersed in a half-numb reverie. Recent events flitted, dreamlike, through my mind; our happy labors in the reading-room; our first visit to the Museum; and this present day that had opened so brightly and with such joyous promise. One by one these phantoms of a vanished happiness came and went. Occasional visitors sauntered into the room—but the galleries were mostly empty that day—gazed inquisitively at my motionless figure, and went their way. And still the dull, intolerable ache in my breast went on, the only vivid consciousness that was left to me.
Presently I raised my eyes and met those of the portrait. The sweet, pensive face of the old Greek settler looked out at me wistfully as though he would offer comfort; as though he would tell me that he, too, had known sorrow when he lived his life in the sunny Fayyum. And a subtle consolation, like the faint scent of old rose leaves, seemed to exhale from that friendly face that had looked on the birth of my happiness and had seen it wither and fade. I turned away, at last, with a silent farewell; and when I looked back, he seemed to speed me on my way with gentle valediction.
XVII
The Accusing Finger
Of my wanderings after I left the Museum on that black and dismal dies irae, I have but a dim recollection. But I must have traveled a quite considerable distance, since it wanted an hour or two to the time for returning to the surgery, and I spent the interval walking swiftly through streets and squares, unmindful of the happenings around, intent only on my present misfortune, and driven by a natural impulse to seek relief in bodily exertion. For mental distress sets up, as it were, a sort of induced current of physical unrest; a beneficent arrangement, by which a dangerous excess of emotional excitement may be transformed into motor energy, and so safely got rid of. The motor apparatus acts as a safety-valve to the psychical; and if the engine races for a while, with the
